In addition to being able to sort people by Most Frequently Contacted, Most Recently Contacted, or Alphabetical, I would like to be able to have a search bar that allows me to filter by name.  

I suggest the list show 5 most recently contacted by default, with preferences to change this:

1) Change to 10 or 20 at top

2) Preference for Most Recently Contacted, Most Frequently Contacted, or Order Added

another option would be to allow "favoriting" or "pinning" contacts